XXXIX.

Hoots and whistles in the cold Christmas Eve
cut sorry smiles into my deep mellow tunes.
All the lost souls in search of glee can't believe
their free money beats family football afternoons.

It's been years since home for the holidays
made sense. I'd get drunk and humbug the snow,
hearts as distant as the Santa Claus days.
And without the highways I'd have no place to go.

Christmas Eve and I hear the homeless in the streets
howling their cheer, carols of childhood provoking
the edge of tears and other lives their roads can't reach,
spirits to quell the season's spirit's invoking.

It's the saddest night for the comfortless, the free,
with all the giving love around, the generosity.

XL.

Here on the ground the snow-angels dress
themselves like cones of dance in streetlight.
In the blizzard wind they wear distress.

The cruel purity of ice is a costume to play
the acts of man in the theartre of the divine,
while the next night's clarity might portray

the beauty of minerals or the just design
of the plane's symmetry and the void's appetite.
The snow-angels bathe naked in arctic wine,

cleansed that simply of the mortal mud's taint,
garments heaped up on the mountains, draped
on the trees, silk of the winter lace-shaped.

Here on the ground the cold frosts paint
the panes with whiskers to disguise the night.

XLI.

How many believe who have no notion of faith,
who say their Lords Above for wives or preachers,
who've never felt like they're full of Christ,
but full of their own guts and manners?

The man's sensitivity erupts from nervous fissures
where his acts of faith are the easy explanations,
the shoulds he hears a Christian ought to give.
The bible-toters used to exchange their identities,

trade in their soiled souls for pure, never mind
the fit, the feel, the consistency of character.
I've resisted every persuasion to come to Christ,
self-integrity my terms against self-sacrifice.

Though he thanks the Lord his motor's fine,
machines serve witness to the clicking mind.

XLII.

I'll accept her mystery without judgement;
let her rave, let her change with the moon.
Her elements transfigure. I've seen so little.
She only wants what complements her room.

I come in with my face tuned to her song
and all the others shut in their shadow boxes.
I wonder when she hears the dissonant strain
she'll study with her faith my paradoxes,

remember in the bath what the mud meant.
What's not in her heart's design is not wrong
and what's tough need not be termed pain.
Love can't shatter if it's not gone brittle.

We need years to believe what our love speaks.
We have only days stolen from long weeks.

XLIII.

I'm howling free where hoofbeats roar
and wild deer scramble when the hawk screams

a fury comes: the silly dog, the bundled man.
And new stars each night need new legends
to tell their arrangements to the dream-tale mind.

I'm singing where streams weep like war widows,
grieved snow wasted by the warrior sun,
laughing in the clown air tickled by trees
and rolling in the cold shadows of dawn.

My life aims for bickering streets and loud lights
where ruin waits in the jingling halls
of the gambling temples for the victims of the greed god.

There my lady waits for my love's rescue
when we'll flee to the woods within to kiss.

XLIV.

I dig your sleepy blues arrangement,
the groove flows easily to my feet.

Without the heat I could have spent more sweat
dancing, though we lay in the moon's bright breath.

(I can believe what feels like magic
is only what we together make work.

We have designed our minds to love as one
and shaped our hears to speak a common tongue.)

This night's cool jazz assembles
a prelude to new constellations.

It is your phase to illumine unfamiliar tunes
and my ride to shine the planets from my rooms.

A daughter waits among the stars to play
these melodies we improvise today.

XLV.

Enormous parades loom in the fog of our fears.
Our peer-strained eyes are squeezed with tears

by all the ways we can't compare
our vacant freedom to our gathered modes.
Sure it's stressed and seems unfair,
but we arranged these sets to test our codes.

Your doubts are true and mine are hushed
(I've trained my will to serve your wish);
our endangered dreams revive uncrushed
from each trampling tread of anguish.

Though threats cut cruel, I see no aisle
we might fulfill our love along
but our blended edges' crooked mile
as we merge our throats in worried song.

XLVI.

In their crude eyes I giggle like a typical sleaze,
crusting blankets in the smoke and stale pooled beer.
In your just sight I look like hell with some disease
and your gate recedes or my clutch can't aim its gear.

Here you're a foreign conscience as I know my own good,
thinking your reasons into a life you don't know why.
I could leave this scene for better years with you.

You'll find me some nights with the crazy crew
and feel like your planets meander a different sky
or that I see you square, but darling I never could.

If I dive low I only dip my wings in crud;
the mud's beauty clings til your rinse rains fresh.
What we swallow filters out of life's pure blood
and the breath of nature steadies in our gross green flesh.

XLVII.

It looks like spring but the sun grips cold.
My heart's set south to my true love's fire
where the desert lights bloom gaudy gold
as my heat goes dry and my airs retire.

She's wrapped between dreams and the telephone,
my pangs of trust and her honesty.
I'll bring empty hands to her open home
hoping love will ease our poverty.

Though slumped inside, I'm a nervous bee.
I go walk my coils down the avenue.
The sun bites down with its icy teeth.
I sing and smile. I frown and brood.

Tomorrow buzzes in my ears today:
her love and the city and our work and play.

XLVIII.

One day I wore five suits, another three.
Each I thought like the role suggested,
feeling who'll you'll feel me as in our house,
or too seriously amused by the daily drama.

Nights you're down working and the walls hum
I'll hear some molding in the closet, dossolving
at the folds til only the thread of the seams holds
while all my new shirts parade around the room.

My heart, awake from its long drowse, will pester me
for new shoes and fitting sweaters, trousers.
Busy now: work clothes, overalls please. Oh yes!
til I'm quite cloaked and positively dressed.

Yet there will be naked times in the bath to laugh
and feel like babies cuddled wet and soapy fun.

XLIX.

How could you whistle up the false wind anyway
if your tricks didn't miss the new-thrown stone?
(Gravity shares Necessity with the Speed of Light.)
Your honesty hurts like a thorn where the fruit hides.

Can I drive you down my purple streets,
hold you still in the sweet-walk's trance?
You feel like roses but you talk like fire;
I stow my figures but reveal my stance.

The clawed naked branches crack the beam's display
and make the moon flee crazy from her throne.
Don't speak of her children or hamper her flight,
our pilgrimage follows the lamp of the songbird guides.

I need her lightning like she needs my cleats:
to grip with charged tread to the turf of desire.

L.

She blames my bones and I bend her sails.
Our home splits quick in the pride of our junk.
I shy to keep my faces pure, cling to please,
when she arrives with hers fixed and bristled.

She'd rather be alone today if I can't say
a thing about tomorrow's promise. I dare
not nail my shirt to the wall, but always
keep a door unlocked to meet the new parades.

We tried to make love in the morning, but only
made her late. We shaped a symbol on the bed
of our love's mistrust: her dry response,
her closure, and my finger-triggered spill.

Again I throw tears at the failure of my heart
to love across the gulf between our island shores.

LI.

I've rolled like a severed timber in my river's current,
snagged on a bar and spun free with easy effort.
I've pitched down canyons, splintered on rocks, worried
my way down patient valleys of forest and desert.

Though I've met swimmers in the eddies, friendly willows
along the shore, who trace their leaves across the water,
I simply dipped in fleet salute to those greeen fellows,
feeling bent toward wider streams and meant for others.

And here I've beached where the river stalls to wallow
in the lady's lapping comfort. This hunk of soggy wood
shall hail the drift debris, but never care to follow.

Yet in the far hills of When I foresee a brewing flood
whose swelling rains could lift me from the shallows
and whirl me to the ocean, pound me in the planet's blood.

LII.

1.
In our ready coves we've banked our expectations,
grilled our steady fingers in the candle of our hopes.
You need strong arms to brace the world above you;
I need the long tolerance you've never had to foster.

If you could tie me in your glad invitations
and I could pry your love from its self-binding ropes,
we might blister heaven's surface enough to
gleam right, written together in history's roster.

We keep feeling the drive of our first determinations
and leave healing our strive-inflicted misanthropes
with our covered eyes and the meaning of I love you
undiscovered by the heart's masked imposter.

My winning works unfold from the worries I conceal
and your lesson lurks in the pride you won't reveal.

2.
We find trusting simple, touching sometimes tough
because lusting doesn't blossom from the roots,
but just perfumes the surface of the lips' soft skin.
Love's flower blooms from the deep desire of the earth.

Of course I cower like a cur at your rebuff
as your sex power falters from my substitutes.
The stitch unravels as the bitter needles sink in;
you bitch for your time and I doubt my worth.

We've not lost our beautiful diamonds in the rough,
but spread the cost across the polish and the slow fruits
of our love's labors might suggest we'll never win
the warm sweet favors promised in the joy of its birth.

Sorrow gnaws where we wished most tenderly we could rejoice,
but love's laws follow the deepest reasons for our hearts' choice.

3.
I've sent my coded misgivings to the fool's table,
but meant to dry them only in one angel's wind.
The broken sticks and the pale teeth of the rain
have spoken tricks of shadow and danger upon me.

My inspirations have ever slept in the cool stable
with aspirations of affording a room at the inn
and breaking like a rich morning where you have lain
and waking you in my poem, embracing you strongly.

This cave we've struck in the chase of our love's fable
will save our luck in the tale we place ourselves in,
but mansions more elegant shall sing our hearts' refrain
and passions more delicate phrase themselves as you want me.

The terrible shackles and the unknown trouble you flee
are bearable tackled when you come home loving to me.

4.
I can only paint what I feel written in my eyes
and the old complaint won't let its hold go unseen.
My blurred vision fastens on the dance of our dilemma:
the first decision fashioned, the effects of the present trail.

Your worry clings to the bold resorts of disguise
while hurry brings contention to the common green.
Our funds tighten in rehearsal for the spring agenda;
the sun brightens, but the petals wilt and the berries pale.

We're balanced between honest love and social lies
which challenge the simple joy we ought to glean
from the fields within, and whose messengers send a
scolding shield against our will to laugh and scorn the veil.

I want to hold you when the dusk goes down in the bleeding west.
I want to hold you still when dawn unfolds our hearts' next test.

5.
Remember the echoes we studied on the midnight bridge,
the embers we elbowed to fit our flames together.
August thought us hasty in our eager plunge submerging;
autumn brought us deeper pools in which to sink or swim.

When winter's thin ice glazed our dreams from edge to edge
we entered the nice maze away from the cold weather
and lost our steps in the dead-end corridors, disturbing
the soft respect for our sense of direction, growing dim.

In April's thaw and the warmth of May's impending wedge
let us draw a map to guide our planned endeavor
through the season's sleep, and see our trips converging
from our reason's feet to our fate's sweet synonym.

The tiger's eyes keep watching us the way we carry on,
but wider skies reward us when the clawing clouds are gone.

LIII.

No more kissless Sundays, going to the store
for my weekly thrill, dancing with pictures,
talking with ghosts. You are my summer,
once watched from towers or dungeons. No more

transit seasons shuttled from door to door,
desolate borders where the cynical weaver would
spin his regrets, cast his nets at worlds away,
harpsongs sunk in the battles of his inner war.

No more wilderness journeys, ache in the pines,
gripped in the saddle with the rain in my face.
No more stumps in the garden, restless roots
of dumb flowers, frustrated among the vines.

You are my heart's adventure, the difficult gift,
my freedom's first choice, my pleasure to lift.